Us Lost Survivors

Us Lost Survivors;chapter2

Sneaking Gwen into the house was as easy as I thought it would be, I had planned an excuse just in case dad was in as he would be the only one to notice any difference in the house but in the end I didn’t need it. Never the less I took her straight to my room just to make sure she wouldn’t be seen but all thoughts of how weird this was left my mind as I saw her stare at my room in outright wonder and fascination.

“That’s my sister and me” I say as she goes to pick up my favourite picture of us but then hesitates, “go ahead, it was taken on our last holiday together” I encourage her.

“What’s she sitting in?” She asks as she points to Willows wheelchair,

“That was her wheelchair, Willow had polio which made her entirely paralysed when she was around five. She died two years ago because of it” I pause suddenly realising that the actual question she had asked showed that she didn’t even know what a wheelchair was, surely she’d been taught by her parents before she left at least? Or maybe in school?

“ Um Gwen? Did you ever go to school? You know before you left”

“No my parents didn’t want me to learn, they said that if I learnt things I would think I was better than them”

“Really?” I couldn’t help but inject quite a lot of sarcasm into that but I was lucky in a way that she probably didn’t even know what that was either.

“Did you and your parents not get on then?”

“No” was the only answer I got as she suddenly leapt onto the bed and began to laugh hysterically as she sunk into the soft mattress and mould her small shape into it. I couldn’t help but laugh along with her; it was so good to see her laughing instead of that usual blank face she seemed to have all the time. I was beginning to think that maybe her parents weren’t as good to her as they should of been, I mean mine aren’t the greatest as there is zero communication between me and them but at least I have a place to live with them and a school to go to.

“Why don’t you take my bed for the night, I don’t mind sleeping on the spare bed beneath it” I said to her while I went to pull the smaller bed beneath it out from the main frame and saw her eyes widen in response to the gift of a bed for the night so easily given.

“You sure?” she said as if in total awe of my sacrifice for the night that I simply laughed and said of course as I continued to make up the pull out bed in order to make it sleep on able.

“Why don’t you use the shower through there” I point out the on-suite to my room and then go on to show her how to use it,

“Can you help me?” she asked as I come back into the room with some stolen hair products from my mum and some pyjamas of my sister that my aunt brought before she realised that Willow had died.

“Don’t you know how to wash her hair Gwen?”

“No, Karen never showed me”

“Whose Karen?” I asked as I started the shower and pulled the head off in order to wash her hair over the basin.

“Oh, she was my mum” she said in a matter of fact way. The simple use of the past tense told me that in Gwen’s mind her parents were long gone whether dead or not and the fact that she’d used her mums’ first name emphasised what she had said earlier about her and her parents not getting along.

We spend the next hour or so cleaning her hair with me showing her how to do it herself and then watching as she tried to copy, then I helped her dry it and turn it into a manageable plat that reached her lower back but as the last rays of sun hit it through my window it glistened like a candle in the dark compared to the matted, rusty version of it that it had been when I first found her. And Willows never before wore pyjamas fitted her, not exactly perfectly, even my paralysed sister had had more meat on her than Gwen currently did, but never the less they didn’t completely fall down so they would do for now. Once I had gotten her into my bed and covered her up I went back into Willows old room which had still been kept in absolute pristine condition, the only sign that her death had affected my parents in anyway and collected the silky soft teddy I once had brought her. The week before her death Willow had told me that she wanted someone else to enjoy it once she was gone and right now I couldn’t think of anyone better to give it to then Gwen. The girl who had taken shelter under my sisters’ bench. When I returned with the teddy bear and tucked it in beside Gwen her eyes shined with tears.

“Gwen what’s wrong?” I asked as I scooped her into my arms and sat beneath the duvet with her.

“Your being so nice” she whispered while she held onto the bear with one hand and pushed away tears with the other.

“Of course I am Gwen; I couldn’t exactly leave you out there could I”

“So many other people have, I’d given up on ever seeing a bed again let alone sleeping in one” I paused while I thought of what to say to her, then turned her slightly so she was entirely on my lap and brushed away the tears that she had missed much like she had done to me in the park.

“You know that bench you were hiding under? Well that bench was dedicated to my little sister”

“The girl in the picture?”

“Yeah, she was your age when she died and I didn’t realise it had been her bench till we had returned from the cafe. But do you know what? I had already decided that I would help you in any way I could so when I saw her name on that bench I knew that somehow fate had brought me and you together Gwen. So no, there was no way I was going to leave you out there on your own when I need you here with me and I think, you need to be here with me as well” she simply looked up at me with big, shining, hopeful eyes that said ‘maybe I have a future here’ and as far as I knew my eyes said ‘maybe you do’ back to her.